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guyome
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby guyome » Mon Sep 14, 2020 6:45 am

nooj wrote:There's so many examples of this throughout the Basque Country. In a matter of one or two generations, a language spoken by 100% of the population, a language that as late as 1904 was put forward as a required language when the town hall of Altsasu were hiring for a town pharmacist, can collapse.

In light of such examples, to go to a town where Basque is currently healthy and assume that Basque is safe is to commit a fatal mistake. It's more accurate to think that Basque is currently one step away from the grave.
That's something important to keep in mind. Too often people assume it takes a long time for a language to die. That's somewhat true, the actual process takes a very long time because as long as there is one native speaker left, the language is indeed 'alive'. It does take decades for a language to literally die. But reaching the point where not enough children speak it is something that can happen really quickly*. And from then on, it is only a matter of time before the language dies, no matter how many people may still be able to speak it.

Usually people wake up when it's too late. I don't know why there is so much inertia. Part of the problem, I think, is that the people in charge (politicians, head of cultural organisations, etc.) are generally older than the average population and so, they don't really understand how badly the language is doing because everyone around them (i. e. their generation) still speaks it. Another problem is that, very often, language census are not reliable because some organisations have a vested interest in inflating the numbers. That allows them to claim their action is a succes and/or that they should be given more money because their work is useful to a large number of people. While this may work for some time, it only hides the true situation the language finds itself in and prevents needed action to be taken.

And, as you say, there is no room for complacency. I read a lot about Welsh a few years ago and it is clear how much efforts it took just to stabilise the language. It seems this hard work is now paying off and that the percentage of speakers in the population is rising. But then there's the problem that a rising number of speakers often reflects the fact that more pupils are speaking it in school, it does not always translate to more people speaking it in everyday life. No room for complacency.


* I remember reading about some extreme case in which the whole adult population of one village in the Alps got together and collectively decided to stop raising the children in Occitan. That was around 1910 if I remember well. I never checked the story to see if it was true but I wouldn't be surprised if it were.
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nooj
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:04 am

I believe that there's a sonority attached to a landscape, a city, a town. You can take that in a mystical sense, and I partly do, but even literally.

Sitting at the beach, reading a book and listening to a group of high school students chatter away in Basque, has a different feel than if they were talking in Spanish, English or any other language.
I can't imagine an English speaking Basque Country and I don't want to. Take a map and run your finger along the named spaces. Pagoarte, Anoa, Txorondegi, Ezkur Haitza, Astuimendi has a taste on the tongue different from the names in Castilla y León.

Wipe away right now humans from the world and you'll still have the same physical geography. Lakes and mountains don't care about the names we give them. But by the collective weight of history, a thousand mouths calling a thing by the same name for a thousand months, something sticks.

Or by the mute violence of geographers and cartographers who follow the conquering armies , one can impose a name on a place, as was done in New Zealand and Australia. First comes the bloody taking into possessió, then comes the coup of the pen. Suddenly the snow capped tallest mountain in New Zealand is no longer Aoraki, it is Mount Cook, an English name that has as its point of reference someone from outside of the Māori system of values and worldview. Even directly hostile to it.

Maybe this is a distant echo of the magical power of calling things by their true names. Which makes it all the more heinous when we no longer know what the true name is. Tasmania is now 'Tasmania' and before it was 'Van Diemen's land', but we don't know what the indigenous peoples who lives there called it, because the English speaking invaders took their languages. Does Tasmania sound true to you? Does it fit into the contours of that wet, green land? Is English the right language to describe and name the reality of Australia?

I think it's important to restore the original topography to a place, and to do it well. It is not merely a process of language revitalisation, it is a process of social reformation and justice that goes with language revitalisation. Names have meaning within the frame of reference of the people who live there. For that reason their consultation and desire is critical. Aoraki is a good example, because it is the name of the mountain as said in the southern Māori dialect that converts /ŋ/ into /k/. Tangata whenua (people of the land, indigenous people) in standard Māori, becomes takata whenua and nga (tribe, people) becomes ka in the South Island. Aorangi would be Māori as well, but not the Māori name used by the people who lived around the mountain. Because the point is to not alienate the people in their own home.

In the south Basque Country, in many places only the Basque names are official, like Oñati, whereas in others both Spanish and Basque are official, like San Sebastián/Donostia. This name has become a sort of shibboleth as well, as many residents prefer to use the Basque name, even if they may be strictly Spanish speakers.
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:05 pm

guyome wrote:
Usually people wake up when it's too late. I don't know why there is so much inertia. Part of the problem, I think, is that the people in charge (politicians, head of cultural organisations, etc.) are generally older than the average population and so, they don't really understand how badly the language is doing because everyone around them (i. e. their generation) still speaks it.


That's frustrating and for language activists who try to save their languages they must feel like Cassandra's foretelling a catastrophe that they can see but their community can't.

It's so unfair, the odds. Every currently living language today, save for the few invented or newly born ones, goes back hundreds, thousands of years. Actually presuming that language genesis only happened once, it's even possible that every living language can trace its ancestry back to that primordial time when homo sapiens first got language.

The sheer length and breadth of history, the quiet desperate struggle of people to survive and thrive in places as farflung as Japan and Papua New Guinea, the thousand of different lifestyles to eke out a short, perilous life: taro farming, fishing, clear cut slash and burning, pastoralism, hunter gathering etc. And throughout all those trials and tribulations, their language accompanied them. And it seems to me unfair that all that was won with so much pain and effort, can be so easily wiped away in a matter of years. It's unfair that a language is so delicate and that it can be destroyed forever because of something so silly as 'here we are in the Chinese nation, you must speak Chinese' or 'here we are all Arabs, you must speak Arabic'.

I have the same rage when the entire billion year evolutionary history of an organism gets annihilated by human greed or negligence. Any random, boring species of bird can trace its origin to the therapod dinosaurs (indeed, all birds are dinosaurs),and from there to the tetrapods and from there to the sarcopterygii (we humans are also modified lobe finned fish) and so forth back all the way to the eukaryotes. The most boring prosaic bird encapsulates an epic journey that led to its current existence. But then we cut down a forest or irradiate their food sources with pesticides and voilà, a dead branch of the tree of life we'll never get back. It's just not fair man.
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Sun Sep 20, 2020 1:20 pm

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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Sun Sep 20, 2020 11:23 pm

I made a tweet in Basque that got some coverage among Basque twitternauts that's making me very uncomfortable. I just use Twitter to follow people I find interesting and post random stuff, but always behind the safe wall of anonymity and indifference. Seeing as how the Basque Country is small however and I'm fairly recognisable, I have half a mind to just delete the whole account. I hope I don't wake up tomorrow to see that it has 10,000 likes because then I know I've really stepped my foot in it.

And all because of that blasted foreigner privilege again, when all I wanted to say was that between foreigners who live in the Basque Country, our language of communication should be Basque and apparently that's worth retweeting?

Speaking of foreigners, I met a Swedish woman in the town of Munitibar-Arbatzegi-Gerrikaitz. She met and married a Basque man from that town. She learned Basque and their children at home speak Basque, Swedish and Spanish. Isn't that wonderful?

There's a thing that is mentioned in the Lekeitio grammar, which I recognised when talking to a Lekeitio man on top of the mountain Otoio. In the Basque from Lekeitio, the trivalent forms of the auxiliary verb (nor-nori-nork), when the indirect object has a first person reference, are missing and replaced by the bivalent forms.

I started off asking the Lekeitio man for some advice and he finished the sentence off for me, using his Lekeitio dialect.

What I was meaning to say :

Lekittera ikasteko aholku batzuk emango dizkidazu?
Will you give me some tips to learn the Basque from Lekeitio?

What I got out:

Lekittera ikasteko aholku batzuk emango...

He finished it for me:

...nasus?

This form nasus however is morphologically identical to the bivalent form nasus (nor-nork).

Liburuak irakurri nasus
I have read the books

This collapsing of DO/IO object marking (but only for first person IO) has been noted in a few other dialects. It was first explicitly described by Lapurdi grammarian Pierre Lafitte in 1944, for the dialects of coastal towns like Hondarribia and Donibane Lohitzune, and from there came his designation of the linguistic phenomenon 'solécisme de la cotê'. But it exists or existed in the inland town of Sara too.

In our more linguistically neutral age, linguists call it 'datiboaren lekualdatzea', the shift in dative placement. None of the other towns immediately next to Lekeitio have this trait, and from Lekeitio to the other mentioned towns, it was a long distance to travel in previous centuries.

So was it independently evolved in all these places? Or did Basque sailors spread the trait starting from one place? But if so, why isn't it more widespread in other coastal towns?

I read a paper a couple of months ago about the phenomenon in modern day Donibane Lohitzune, where it seems to be non existent among the younger generation of Bascophones. I can't find the paper right now though.

The Lekeitio man was in his fifties or so. And the Lekeitio grammar that identified it as a distinguishing feature of Lekeitio vis a vis its Bizkaian neighbours, was written in the 90s. Who's to say that it's not in retrocess among the very young? In 2020, do kids and teens mark their objects in their verbs like their grandparents or parents do?

I'll do some eliciting of sentences in Lekeitio among younger people to see if that Lekeitio grammar needs updating...

If you want to see a map of where this phenomenon exists in the Basque Country, there is an awesome website called Euskara Bariazioan. It's a linguistic database that catalogues dialects down to the town level based on a list of linguistical characteristics. It's a truly impressive and useful tool from Basque linguists.

I've been staying in Lekeitio for the last couple of days, but depending on work I might be living here, at least for a couple of months.
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nooj
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Mon Sep 21, 2020 12:10 am

I read something a couple months back..
Maybe it was an article in a newspaper that talked about why people learn minoritised languages and what's more, specific varieties of said languages.

Specifically with reference to Basque. In a society dominated by Spanish and French, learning Basque does bring certain benefits relating to jobs, but the majority of the benefits mentioned were cultural and social: the ability to enjoy bertsolaritza for example is something that thank God is only done and savoured in Basque.

Or to listen to Basque music, or to read Basque literature, or to get along with your neighbours...but there's always ways to get around that. You can listen to Basque music without knowing what it's about, or read the translation of lyrics (or get someone to translate it for you).

Which is why I guess the majority of Basques don't speak Basque and why most (?) adult foreigners don't learn Basque: because in the land where Spanish and French has invaded all levels of society, learning Basque is not necessary.

That is doubly true for the euskalkiak, the natural dialects of Basque. What would motivate a Basque learner to learn a specific Basque dialect, and not be content with standard Basque?

I can think of these. There may be more but for me these would be the most compelling:

- Because my family speaks or spoke it.
- Because my partner speaks it.
- Because the people in my town or city speak it.

Which again have to do with cultural or social reasons. To fit in. To be accepted. To be an 'authentic' member of your community. Speaking a specific dialect can be a marker of covert or insider prestige, in the absence of those factors that make a language prestigious in the conventional, top-down ways.

In choosing to spend time and effort in learning a natural Basque dialect, one is also investing time and effort in creating something that money can't buy: an identity.
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nooj
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Mon Sep 21, 2020 1:39 pm

Sure, Western Europe has nature. But it has low biodiversity that's getting lower every year.

Many of the forests I walk through in the Iberian Peninsula, like everywhere in Western Europe are plantations. Not managed with the intention of letting them do their own thing, planted with foreign tree species, and certainly not old growth.

There are very few old growth forests, the closest thing to 'untouched' forest, left in Europe. The remaining ones can be found in Central/Eastern Europe (Romania has a bunch that is constantly being chipped away due to illegal logging), a bit in Scandinavia and Finland and then a lot in remote areas of Russia.

Think about the forest cover Finland has. You can see it via Google Maps. The majority of those trees are grown to supply the forestry industry. A monoculture. Rows and rows of the same species. The soil chemistry, the native species, none of that will come back. It's not meant to. In Europe forests are grown in order to be cut down.

The 'Old World' is cool and all but I want to go back home to Australia and NZ and enjoy the nature we have before that too is lost due to our greed and stupidity which seems as limitless as the coal we keep digging up in Australia.

I've talked before about how Australia leads the world in mammal extinctions, due to clearing land for cattle grazing. Something like a quarter of our forests are still old growth, and I spent my formative youth playing in them.

Why am I mentioning all this? Because I'm getting home sick... because biodiversity matters as much to me as linguistic diversity. I'm also a bit sick of the hypocrisy. Europeans wring their hands over Brazilian forests burning down and 'exotic' indigenous peoples under threat. They're happy to watch that on National Geographic.
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Wed Sep 23, 2020 8:16 am

Pays basque : à Urrugne et Lahonce, des panneaux d’entrée de ville en langue française ont disparu

Someone stole the signs showing the French names at the entrance of the towns of Urruña et Lehunztar. In the grand scheme of things small actions like these don't matter, as the townhall has already ordered new signs. But due to coronavirus, they're being slow to be delivered.

So for a short period, visitors who enter Urruña and Lehuntzar will see the Basque name only. It doesn't matter if it's only a few days or weeks. It was beautiful while it lasted.

That letter 'ñ' is the subject of bitter legal battles in France due to its presence in Breton names. A Breton family wanted to name their child Fañch, they were denied, according to the logic that the ñ doesn't exist in the official orthography of the sole official language of the Republic, which is French:

En 2014, le ministre de la justice limite, dans une circulaire du 23 juillet, la liste des lettres et signes diacritiques (accents, points, etc.) que l’état civil pourra utiliser : « seul l'alphabet romain [sic] peut être utilisé et que les seuls signes diacritiques admis sont les points, tréma, accents et cédilles tels qu'ils sont souscrits ou suscrits aux voyelles et consonne autorisés par la langue française »


For a blistering attack on this judgement, see this article by the linguist Philippe Blanchet, Un « ñ » breton ou espagnol menace l’unité française.

Of course this affects Basque, Asturian, Galician, Spanish etc names as well, which all use ñ in the orthography, but unlike Asturian and Galician, Breton and Basque are claimed by the French constitution itself to be some of the 'patrimonial languages' of France. That word, patrimony, has about as much meaning for the French legal system as toilet paper.

In any case, the technical arguments offered as to why Fañch should not be permitted is ultimately founded on an ideological position:

Il faut d’abord remarquer que le « raisonnement » du tribunal est particulièrement absurde : « admettre un ñ reviendrait à rompre la volonté de notre État de droit de maintenir l'unité du pays et l'égalité sans distinction d'origine ».

It must be noted that the reasoning of the court is particularly absurd: "to accept an ñ would amount to breaking the desire of our State of law to maintain the unity of the country and to maintain equality without distinction of origin."


As Blanchet points out, this argument is perverse because preventing people from writing their names according to their language orthography, is the exact opposite of equality without distinction of origin. It is another case of France confusing unity with uniformity, and if the unity of the state is threatened by an ñ, it's a piss weak state you got there.
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Thu Sep 24, 2020 8:46 am

I once asked a native Basque speaker from Lapurdi, so the north Basque Country, what dialect he spoke. And the thing is that it's not so easy to say.

He said that he spoke Basque in multiple ways. He speaks a coastal Lapurdi dialect, 'super peasant' style with his family and with the people in his town and with the people of his neighbouring towns.

But he also speaks a standard Baxe-nabar/Lapurdi dialect with the people from the Baztan Valley (on the other side of the border, in the south Basque Country which share similar if not identical dialects) , and also with people from the interior of Lapurdi, from Baxe Nafarroa...and this is also the dialect he uses with people from Zuberoa. Zuberoans tend to switch to this dialect, to talk with 'Manex', what they call Basques from outside of their province. They don't tend to speak Zuberoan with other Basques.

Finally, he told me that he speaks another kind of way «hegoaldeko ez-jakinentzat», for those from the south Basque Country who have no or little knowledge of the north Basque Country's dialects. This is his imitation of the standard language with southern tones, hewing closely to the Gipuzkoan dialect.

In his language repertoire, there is the Basque of his family + the Basque of his town + the Basque of his province + an inter provinicial standard.

He concluded by saying that Batua, the Basque standard language, is more of an abstraction than a reality. Batua is always the batua of someone and some place, and always reflects that origin. The standard Basque of someone from Bilbo will be different from the standard Basque of Maule... someone from Bilbo, even though they may be a neolocutor and didn't learn Basque in the family, will say ni naz, ikusi dot, whereas a neolocutor from Donostia will say ni naiz, ikusi det. Curiously this happens even when they themselves don't speak any natural Basque dialect...the influence of the Basque dialects are pervasive and inescapable.

I think it's safe to say that it's impossible to be a Basque speaker, native or otherwise, and not have a Basque that is identifiable from somewhere, even if it's not the GPS pinpoint accuracy of this Lapurdi person I was speaking to.
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby nooj » Thu Sep 24, 2020 6:26 pm

https://voca.ro/bfLPl2ihGRU

A short fragment of a conversation I recorded (no names and such so as to preserve their anonymity) at a bar in Munitibar. In Munitibar they speak a variety of the Lea-Artibai subdialect of Western Basque, related to Lekeitio dialect.

I played this audio to my friend, a native Basque speaker from Azkoitia in the neighbouring province of Gipuzkoa and she said she didn't understand anything.

I think it's because 1) the audio quality is not that great 2) the audio dumps you into the middle of a conversation with no clues as to what topic they're talking about. That's hard for any language.

Later I went and talked to the men, and they switched to a more Batua influenced version of their dialect (see my previous post) in order to talk to me.

I fully believe that my friend with her vast native speaker ability would understand their full-on, no- concessions-given dialect, so long as she stayed there for a few days.

It's my fervent credo that most of the famous intercomprehension between even the most far apart dialects is a problem of exposure.

The Lapurdi native speaker I talked about in the previous post told me he had travelled to Ondarroa not far from Munitibar where they speak a similar dialect. And he initially didn't understand anything. But after a couple of days staying in Ondarroa, he got over it. People in the north Basque Country rarely have occasion to hear Western Basque, and that was probably the main reason why it posed such a problem to him.
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